


Snapshots in a Starfield

by DreamerInSilico



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Feels, F/F, Fic Compilation, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Sentinel!Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 20:34:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 3,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16839943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: Bits and pieces of the life (and in one continuity fork, death) of Commander Mara Shepard and her partner, Liara.





	1. Dramatic Tension

**Author's Note:**

> This is a microfic compilation originally posted on Tumblr. I want it here because that site is trying very hard to go down in flames.

Thane kept having to press his lips together to keep from laughing aloud. Fortunately, Shepard had for once failed to notice his amusement, being far too consumed with the frustration she was _radiating_ at the young asari. Liara, for her part, gave the impression of being completely preoccupied by her goal to take down the Shadow Broker, pacing the floor of the CIC and rattling off tactics and contingencies under her breath, but Thane did not miss the surreptitious glances she kept stealing at Shepard when the other woman’s head was turned. 

The tension was palpable as they were deposited on the craggy hull of the Shadow Broker’s ship, though this time, not from any trepidation for the mission. 

They worked their way carefully across the hull, searching for an access point, and when Liara finally spotted it perhaps fifty meters away across the ship, Shepard simply began mowing a swathe through the guard mechs in a straight line to get there. Thane and Liara had no choice but to back her up, the trio’s biotics tossing enemies in all directions with armor-piercing bullets to follow. 

“ _Must_ you plow through half the mechs on the ship?” Liara gasped into the comms as she began setting up the software slicer to access the hatch. "So much for any hope of stealth.“ 

Then Thane _did_ laugh. "Dr. T'soni, you worked with Shepard long before - did you truly expect any different?” he asked, voice carrying the light harmonic overlay of humor. Shepard actually glanced at him, and he could see a small smile through her dark-tinted visor. Liara had made only a small huffing noise and returned to her work. 

Once inside, they came to a large chamber filled with mechs and lackeys, and Shepard held up a hand to order a pause. "I don’t think we can get around, and this crowd would be safer to deal with in a bottleneck - you two go back to the previous chamber and get ready to ambush; I’ll put my shield upgrades to good use and draw them back here,“ she said briskly. 

"Shepard, I - ” Liara started what was, from her tone, likely to be a protest, but something in Shepard’s challenging stance stopped her short, and she nodded. "Alright. Be careful.“ 

Thane and Liara withdrew as instructed, kneeling at either side of the doorway and preparing to deal with whatever Shepard brought out on her heels. "Need a moment to get the shields up,” Shepard’s voice came in on the comm. 

Thane looked over to the asari, whose ready stance was rigid but poised, her eyes locked on Shepard as the commander fiddled with her omnitool. The assassin sighed, then subvocalized the command that would set his transmission to a private channel with Liara. 

“I realize this is likely not my place, but…” Liara’s helmet turned toward him, but she said nothing. "In case you haven’t noticed, the commander is rather likely to pin you to the nearest bulkhead as soon as this mission is concluded. I suggest you be prepared for that eventuality.“ 

He could just barely make out her rueful grin behind the visor before Shepard started counting down in their ears, and the action began once more. 


	2. After the Mission

After a particularly grueling mission, Shepard stumbled up to her cabin, feeling like half the inhabitants of Tuchanka had trampled her, even though Dr. Michel had been impressed with her relative lack of injuries. 

And Liara was just standing there, in front of the fish tank, waiting. 

Some part of Shepard’s heart leaped - the asari woman had been more aloof than even her usual habit lately - but all she could do was blink dumbly as her lover put her hands on her hips and stared her down. 

“You know I hate it when you don’t take me with you.” 

Shepard winced. "Yeah… but we needed Tali to - “ 

"I know, Shepard,” Liara said with exaggerated patience. "But you’ll still have to accept the consequences.“ 

”…Consequences?“ She thought that at least a ghost of the intended wryness went through. 

"You look like Cortez dragged you behind the shuttle instead of carrying you in it. I am going to have to check - thoroughly - for myself that you are alright. Now, get in the shower.”

“…Yes, ma'am.”


	3. Static Electricity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Codex entry: "However, the use of mass effect fields creates static electrical charge. … For biotics, this manifests as an occasional static shock when they touch metal or other people.“

With two biotics, it was bound to happen sooner or later. 

Shepard, just returned from a mission, leaned in to leave a swift peck on Liara’s temple as the asari sat at her workstation… and they both jumped as a tiny spark leaped from Shepard’s lips to Liara’s skin. 

There was a second’s pause, and Shepard laughed. "Oops.” 

“ ‘Oops,’ indeed,” Liara murmured, arching a brow - but she smiled slightly as she spoke. 

…

“That was a pretty good match, Vakarian. For a turian, anyway,” Vega prodded. 

“You’re right, it was a pretty good match, for a - ” he ruined the effect by searching for the epithet, but forged on nonetheless - “punch-drunk jarhead.” 

The human shook his head and laughed. "You’ll have to do better than that, buddy. I wonder if Liara’s still at it down there.“ 

Garrus shook his head, nonplussed. "I’d say I was curious what pissed her off, but she didn’t look like that’s why she was working so hard. Shepard’s the only biotic I’ve ever seen even touch the training bags before.” 

Shepard, who was just passing through the mess, perked her ears at the sound of her name, but dismissed the overheard fragment and continued to her quarters. Liara had promised to come up later, and a shower was _happening_.

…

Once upon a time, Shepard would have missed the faint edge of smugness to Liara’s greeting smile, but the recent time in close contact had given her a lot of practice at picking up on the more subtle asari expressions. 

She was definitely up to something, and Shepard found out what it was three seconds later, as Liara leaned in to kiss her full on the lips. 

“Yikes! What have you been _doing_ all day?” Shepard demanded.

“…Things.” Liara darted in for a peck on her cheek, and the spark was smaller than the first, but still pretty impressive. 

“Right. Things.”

“Mmhmm.” A third, faint crackle at her earlobe. Shepard shivered. 

“Eeek! Now you’re just doing it on purpose!” 


	4. Rum and Research

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Something with Liara, your Shep, involving rum and research in some shape or form."

Shepard knew what she would see before she even placed her hand against the door sensor. The panel would hiss open, and Liara would be hunched in her chair in front of a dozen flickering screens, lit only by their glow and the cheerful bobbing light of her VI assistant. Her sharp chin would be resting on clasped hands, and her eyes would be half-focused and tired, yet somehow still tracking more information than most spaceport controllers Shepard had met.

The tableau did not disappoint, down to the last detail. She shook her head with a fond half-smile - at least she’d planned for this. 

“Liara,” she greeted. 

“Hello, Shepard,” the asari murmured. Her eyes never left her console, but Shepard saw her lips twitch, just a little. Perfect. 

Sidling up behind her lover, Shepard placed the small, dark bottle and stacked tumblers she carried on the desk, and began to rub at the slim shoulders before her, coaxsdfsdfing a tiny sigh from the other woman. "What are you working on?“ 

"Going back through the newest Prothean data… cross-checking it with my early findings… I just feel like I’m missing something important.” The graceful hands unfolded to rub at her eyes. 

“Headaches again?” Shepard asked. 

“Ahh, no, not really. Just… been looking at this too long.” 

“Well, that’s _just_ what I was hoping to hear,” she ducked her head to purr against Liara’s neck. "I even brought my secret stash to share with you.“ 

Liara laughed softly, eyeing the bottle with amused trepidation. "That’s a very… evocative label… it looks a bit like a hanar.” 

Shepard traced her hands up and along Liara’s head crests, making the asari’s eyelids flutter as she leaned back into Shepard’s touch. "It’s called the Kraken, love. Old human myth, very large, very aquatic, very scary. But the rum is damned tasty, I must say.“ 

"Well. We must try this ‘rum’ of yours… but not too much, I think, since I don’t want you falling asleep on me just yet,” she teased with a smile. 

Shepard snorted a laugh and nipped at her throat. " _I’m_ not the one you should be worried about.“ 

Liara turned around, then, and took a handful of short, copper-bright hair to pull Shepard in to kiss her. 

"We shall see.”


	5. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ME3 ending fix.

Liara opened her eyes to smooth, violet walls and the acidic tang of disinfectant. She blinked, rapidly sorting through memories that might give her some clue how she had gotten there. 

They’d gone to fight the Reapers in the Sol system. She remembered that. The clean lines and color palette of her surroundings spoke to an asari-designed space, but it was unlikely she had been transported to an asari colony. And Thessia… She winced.

Not an asari world, then. It’d have to be a ship’s medbay… dreadnought, by the spacious expanse of the place. With that realization, she allowed herself to think of her body, and there was the pain. Tolerable, dull pain, but she felt it deep enough to know that her injuries must have been terrible. 

What had she…?

_The firefight. Field of the fallen, everyone racing for the beam… had to get to the beam…_

_Mara._

Abruptly, she pushed herself up from the reclining bed, fighting a wave of dizziness, but at least her limbs responded to her orders. There was a bruise on one inner forearm that spoke of a recently-removed intravenous line. Good thing it was gone, now. 

Just as she set bare, shaking feet to the floor, a door hissed open to admit an asari attendant. 

“Doctor T'Soni! The monitors said you were awake, but you mustn’t - " 

Liara cut her off. "What’s our status?” 

The medic showed her military stripes, then, responding automatically to the command that, though spoken quietly, nevertheless held the authority of an officer’s bark. "The Reapers have been deactivated. Some drifting in orbit around Earth, some burning in the atmosphere as we speak, but they’re gone enough.“ 

Liara closed her eyes and took a breath. The second question was much harder. "And Shepard?” 

Even though the medic answered immediately, the slight pause as she processed the question seemed too long. "Alive. Barely, but she’s here, too. Intensive care unit. You’re in the - “

"Destiny Ascension, yes, I know, I saw your insignia. Point the way,” Liara interrupted, pushing herself fully to her feet and taking a step away from the bed…. and then she shuddered, and her feet were somehow no longer under her, and then the cool floor met her skin. 

_Mara. You made it. You_ did _it._

The medic was scolding and pulling her up, maneuvering her back into the bed and saying something about injuries… healing… would be time later. Liara didn’t hear half of it and tried to fend her off to get back up, but the fiendish woman had a hypo and she knew how to use it. 

…

When they finally let her into the ICU, Shepard was just starting to wake up. That first sliver of a glimpse of the human woman’s violet-blue eyes was the most beautiful thing Liara had ever seen. 

“No, wait, not yet…” Shepard muttered, so faint and hoarse that the words were almost unintelligible. "Let me finish…“ 

"You did, love,” Liara whispered, reaching down to the singed remains of the bright red hair to trace a soothing pattern across her scalp, the way she might an asari child awakening from a nightmare. 

Shepard’s eyes blinked fully open, all at once. "…Liara?“ 

"I’m here.” 

“I…” Shepard’s hands were shaking, but they worked their way out from under the covers, and Liara clasped them carefully, drawing them to her lips to kiss the knuckles. "What…?“

"I wasn’t any more awake for it than you seem to have been, but they tell me you sent out a transmission from the Citadel. Looked like gibberish to everyone except the Geth, who could tell it had something to do with Reaper code. And then they just… stopped.”

“Wait, but… the mass relays?” 

“What about them?” Liara asked, brow furrowed in confusion. 

“The child told me they would be destroyed, regardless of what I did… and I didn’t kill the Reapers, I jumped into a beam of light…” The asari let her continue. It didn’t make sense, but she supposed it was a wonder Shepard had even gotten up from the Reaper blast, in the first place. "… Did they bring Anderson down?“ she asked, quietly. 

"Anderson?” 

“He was with me. He made it up there, but - the Illusive Man… killed him,” Shepard stuttered, looking uncertain. "He watched the stars with me before… before the child.“ 

"Anderson was found on the field,” Liara corrected gently. "Same as I was. Only, he wasn’t alive when they got to him. There weren’t any bodies up on… well, that part of the Citadel, at least, except yours.“ 

Shepard’s face twisted into a grimace. "Ach, none of this even makes _sense_! I _saw_ you… on the blasted Normandy! You and Garrus and Tali and Joker and EDI… and some garden world. But you’re right here.” 

Liara laughed softly and squeezed the trembling hands she held. 

“Yes, love, I am." 


	6. Wartorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Your Shep and Liara, standing on war-ravaged Thessia after the Reapers have been defeated. Go!" (Takes place in the same continuity as "Aftermath.")

Mara Shepard suppressed a shudder as she stepped out of the shuttle onto Thessian soil. There were too many memories of flames and screaming and the bitter, metallic tang of acknowledged defeat that threaded through the words and actions of the tattered remains of the asari military… and that crashing sense of helpless failure as the Cerberus assassin had escaped with the data they needed. 

It was then that she had realized that even she had begun to expect herself to perform miracles, time and time again. The irony had nearly choked her as she made her report to Admiral Hackett. 

All this warred with how their first visit to Thessia was _supposed_ to be… They’d had plans, those years ago when they were chasing geth in the Traverse; their next leave time would be spent together, touring the strange and beautiful asari planet. And then the Collectors had come, and Shepard had died, and all those plans fluttered by the wayside, never to be picked up again. 

Shepard shoved the painful ruminations to the back of her mind to focus her attention on Liara - this was her homeworld, the so-called jewel of the galaxy, and its once-perfect facets were still riddled with cracks. Liara would be remembering it as it had been in her childhood, and the contrast was cruel beyond measure. 

“Well,” Shepard said quietly, glancing around her, “It looks a hell of a lot better than it did when we left.” 

Liara made a noise halfway between a sniffle and a laugh, and slipped her hand into Shepard’s, slim blue fingers intertwining with scarred cream ones and squeezing tight. 


	7. Little Blue Baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Your Shepard, Liara post little blue child."

“And then the asari Councillor called _me_ , and said, ‘Shepard - don’t even bother trying to put me off - we’re on the edge of an intergalactic incident here and I know you can stop it.’ And then she hung up. Good thing, too, because I started laughing. It was too ridiculous.” 

Vieyra looked up at her, all huge, studious blue eyes and thin, crossed arms. "And then you went and told Mother, right?“ 

Mara Shepard chuckled and ran her fingers through her silvered hair, grinning down at her daughter. "Of course. And then she rolled her eyes and said - ”

“- 'Alright, the salarian embassy should be finding those files… right about now,’” Liara finished, swooping by to press a kiss to Mara’s cheek. "You like that story far too much,“ she laughed. 

"Maybe, but Vieyra hadn’t heard it yet!” Mara protested. 

“I hadn’t,” the child corroborated seriously. 

“In a few years, little wing, you are going to realize,” Liara snorted, “that you have the two strangest parents in the galaxy….” She trailed off, muttering, “and that is _saying_ something, coming from me.”


	8. Shadows of Omega

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liara and Aria have a friendly chat.

“So you represent the Shadow Broker.”

It wasn’t a question, but Liara answered anyway, with an enigmatically patient smile. “I do.”

The elder asari smirked, arms crossing over her chest. “There are a lot of shadows on Omega. How many do they really have access to, anyway?”

Liara’s smirk was a far more subtle thing. The look she gave the self-styled Queen of Omega was one that Mara Shepard saw as ‘knowing,’ but that the Spectre also knew from a great deal of amused experience that most other asari would see simply as cockily naïve. She hid that amusement, then, as best she could, simply hanging back and watching the fireworks as her lover faced off with her… friendly acquaintance.

“Enough,” Liara had answered, simply. “What is it that you need?”

Aria snorted, shaking her head dismissively. “Shouldn’t you know that already? I thought I should be able to just name a price and get the information that was worth it.”

Liara was unperturbed. “The Shadow Broker knows a great many things that you _need_. The more pertinent quesiton is… which ones do _you_ know of, and want to fill?”

“Don’t try to play these games with me,” Aria sighed, looking amused. “It’s cute, really, but I’m a busy woman.”

“We know that you are. Which is why I asked the question.” The Shadow Broker spread her fingers in a customary asari gesture of respectful inquisitiveness, though her eyes held an edge of mockery.

Which Aria T'Loak clearly did not enjoy, but it was just as clear to Shepard that she would answer, nonetheless. 


	9. To Stand Beside You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I gave my life to stand beside you"

Screams, gunfire, and scorched flesh. They’d made it behind cover in time to survive the reaper’s attack, but only just. 

“Cortez! Get in here and pick up wounded! Now!” Shepard all but shouted into her commlink from beside Liara. 

Liara gingerly stretched out her left leg, testing her range of motion with the burns she’d sustained to her side. Painful, but she’d had worse. She gritted her teeth. It would do. Shepard was checking her suit and her ammo in those few spare moments, and Liara did the same - they were going to need every bit of edge they had when they got up to the Citadel. 

There was an engine roar that came from closer than the general din of battle, and then the shuttle was there. Garrus limped his way aboard, clutching both his rifle and his shattered right arm to his chest with his left. Liara nodded to herself, glad to see that he would be safe, while slamming a fresh thermal clip into her pistol. 

“Liara, go - take the shuttle; you’re hurt,” Shepard was saying, as Cortez continued to hover nearby. 

“I’m fine,” the asari protested. "Hand me a dose of medi-gel and let’s get to the Citadel! We don’t have much time.“ 

"Hell no! I won’t risk losing you any more than I already have!” Shepard was really yelling, now. 

Liara narrowed her eyes, snarling, “And _I_ won’t _watch you leave me_ to go get yourself killed again! Cortez, get Garrus out of here; I’m fine!” 

“Liara - ”

“ _Shut up_ and hand me the medi-gel, because by the Goddess, I’m going with you.”

She never found out whether Shepard would have actually done so, because a tube of it landed in her lap, thrown from the shuttle. Cortez flashed a grim smile and waved as he closed the shuttle doors. 

Shepard was cursing under her breath, now, but she waited the ten seconds it took Liara to apply the gel before extending a hand to pull her to her feet. There were two telltale streaks in the soot on her face. "You really are insufferable,“ she muttered fiercely. 

Liara squeezed her hand tightly. "I know.”

They turned back toward the Citadel beam, where it still glowed weirdly against the tortured sky. 

“I love you.” Shepard didn’t let go of her hand until they were fully out of cover.

“I know.”


	10. I Hear the Silence Die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "your choice of M/F Shep romantic interest struggling (failing?) to keep it together post Shep’s death"

“ _I know how you feel.”_

She kept hearing it, and kept feeling guilty for being angry when they said it. Most of them had lost loved ones in the war; they were hurt and grieving, just as she was.

_Liara gave the human officer the expected sad smile and courteous tilt of her head, acknowledging the possibility if not the truth of it._

But they were not asari.

_Thessia was a ruin, yet all the pain of that thought was a brown dwarf to the supernova of each time she remembered the Alliance personnel officer’s words and the cold feel of the battered identification the humans called ‘dog tags’ falling into her hand._

_Again._

_They were the same tags she had returned to Nicaela that night in the captain’s quarters on the new Normandy._

Her race was, after standard millenia in galactic civilization, well-accustomed to outliving their non-asari lovers.

“ _The first one is by far the most difficult.”_

But Liara was not her race.

_She believed that platitude, as it was genuinely given by commandos and diplomats alike, asari far older, more experienced, and nominally wiser in the ways of living the longest lifespan of any sentient race in the galaxy. But what if it was too difficult? What if this broke her?_

_Did they all feel this aimless?_

_Did they feel the cacophony of civilization around them and not see it as opportunity, or even as a reminder of what they had saved, but rather what they had lost?_

_Nicaela Shepard had been her silence. Her oasis of peace in the chaos of a civilization running scared from the greatest threat any part of it had ever faced._

She was young as her kind measured such things, destined to live perhaps another ten human lifetimes, if that path through time was not cut short by violence.

_Violence that had not ended with the Battle Over Earth._

_They had spoken of peace. A home together on each of their worlds. A daughter, even, perhaps. They had never truly believed it, or so Liara had thought until that dream was laid to final rest with her human lover, and she realized just how much she had been counting on that outcome._

_Even if Nicaela were still with her, they would still be fighting. Fighting unrest, fighting to rebuild – but fighting all the same._

All that time ahead of her, and all she could think of was the human Spectre who had died and left her.

_They would be fighting._

_But they had saved the galaxy together, and that had to count for something._


End file.
